The Taj Mahal
is known the world over as a white, marble monument to love, a tomb built approximately between 1632-1653 by
Shah Jahan.

He apparently
built this mausoleum for his beloved 3rd wife, Mumtaz Mahal when she inconveniently dropped heavily from her
perch before he did, directly after bearing her 14th child.

This must have been a great
relief for her, but it left him grief-stricken
and heart-broken.

Accounts of
his behaviour depict him as a broken man, supposedly quite dramatically emotive in his
portrayal of desolation and existential loneliness.

Most
school children know this, and every adult with a television does as well. Furthermore, almost every school
book, documentary, history book and tourist guide will tell you this. It's a state fact.

Indeed,
there is information extant about the thousands of fine craftsmen, the entire board of well-known architects and
the principal designer, all of this enormous project being under imperial supervision.

So, it
must be true, mustn't it? Mustn't it?

It is in
fact not even remotely true. And this is only one instance out of many thousands where mistakes and even
outright lies are recorded for posterity as being the literal historical 'truth'.

There is
overwhelming evidence that The Taj Mahal was not built in the 17th century as an Islamic monument, but rather in
the 4th century as a Rajput Hindu temple palace, and which was very much later commandeered and done-over for
use as a tomb for Mumtaz by Shah Jahan.

It was actually more like taking
an exquisite pleasure palace of breathtaking beauty and converting it into a memorial that also doubled
quite well as a wayside attraction for tourists.

In fact,
the good Shah went so far as to put it about in a poetic sort of way that those who visited the Taj would become
free of sin, penning the following:

'Should
guilty seek asylum here,
Like one pardoned, he becomes free from sin.
Should a sinner make his way to this mansion,
All his past sins are to be washed away.
The sight of this mansion creates sorrowing sighs;
And the sun and the moon shed tears from their eyes.
In this world this edifice has been made;
To display thereby the creator's glory.'

Several
learned people have realised the truth about this structure, and at least one of them ended up deceased in the
middle of his work (Professor Bhatnagar), perhaps yet another unfortunate victim of someone else's idea of the
way things should be.

The roots
of this fraud go back quite far and later also involved the British Imperialist rule in India, and so they are
naturally partly political in nature.

The Taj
Mahal was utterly romanticized as the 8th wonder of the world, a stunning testament to love.

Of course,
if a ruler really gave up as soon as his favourite wife died, quitting his kingdom and squandering its wealth on
a mausoleum while sitting each day stock-still, displaying his prematurely white and grizzled beard at a
window, gazing with sunken eyes towards the fabled - well, later on - spot where his deceased darling's remains
lay, people around him might have begun to get jolly irritated, which they later did, but not for that
reason.

That's not
to say that the Shah Jahan didn't grieve for and miss Mumtaz, or that he didn't spend money indiscriminately. He
did. But basically, he merely gave the entire building complex what he considered to be a pretty tasteful and
nifty upgrade, which may well have ruined it, and dedicated it all to her and the Creator.

Most of
the written and inaccurate accounts of Shah Jahan and his behaviour reflect the heavily elaborated Persian style
as well as the propaganda of the time. Add to this the drivel written later on by awe-struck poets, invading
foreigners and the many dignitaries who visited the Taj Mahal and had to write something very nice about it for
the sake of diplomacy.

Noting how
the average modern person now reacts to 'stars' of various varieties, as well as the superficial Hollywood and
Bollywood scenes, one can see how for 300 years people have been completely carried away by the vision of a
very, very large and sparkling white building and its sad associations.

It's a bit
like Graceland, and slightly tacky

close-up.

A living
legend grew up around the tomb, Shah Jahan and his devoted over-the-top love for his deceased wife. It became
associated with tourism and romance of the purest and most expensive kind.

One is
supposed to imagine the Shah as an altruistic celibate, his beard turned white overnight with grief and
dedicated entirely to his lost wife's memory, rather than the extremely egotistical and vain tyrant who with
beard still dark had 6 male relatives murdered lest his position be threatened, all while having sex with the
wives of his officials. So much for having a
harem.

Three of
the people who have researched and written about this astonishing conspiracy are Professor P. N. Oak, Dr. V. S.
Godbole and Wayne E. Begley.

A
rudimentary search of the internet should supply anyone interested with hours of reading on this very subject,
including downloadable PDF files, allowing the reader to research further and become convinced, at least in
their own mind, of the veracity of Wotta Tripp's seemingly outlandish statements.

But if
such widely 'known' facts are, in fact, wrong, then we must wonder how much of our reality has been engineered
for us, and the answer is, unfortunately, rather a lot.

So if the
best known monument to love is, well, not so much, what about our other misconceptions, perhaps about love
itself?

Could our
ideas about love be as skewed as our understanding of history?

What is
real love? How does it work, and do we expect too much or too little from our lovers and partners? Surely Shah
Jahan was not really demonstrating real love with his exaggerated and possibly compulsive
behaviour?

One thing
that a lot of people would agree upon: we don't seem to have got it quite right yet, just as we know much, much
less about the real history of Earth than we think we do.

If we had
got it right in the love department, the work of Dame Wotta Tripp would be at least halved, enabling her to take
up bee-keeping much more enthusiastically and continue her less well-known work of ridding the world of the
joint-scourges of both mimes and clowns.

What Is Love?

For some
people, love is a bloody nuisance, and they pay it little mind, but most people take this strange and precarious
state of mind extremely seriously at least once in their lives, and frequently more than once.

No matter
how much someone has been humiliated or scorned, at some point they are usually ready to risk it all one more
time.

Throwing
caution to the winds and baring their souls - and bodies - again, they pursue the perfect relationship as though
they were fishing for the big one, looking for that perfect catch, the fabric from which legends are
made, the one that took a lot to land, something that you can stuff and mount with pride and finally show to all
your friends.

Of course,
it never works out quite that way.

Sooner or
later Real Life pokes its unsavoury little head around your door to remind you about, well, real
life.

He eats
like a pig, she leaves her underwear hanging all over the bathroom, he never turns the lights off, she takes the
last beer, he tells progressively larger lies, she whispers on the phone.

Pretty
soon, someone is sleeping with someone's sister or best friend and someone else is packing, seeking sympathy all
over the place and wildly plotting revenge.

Real Life
needs its nasty arse kicking, but the human spirit, bowed down with sorrow a goodly portion of the time, rises
buoyantly, bravely and proudly, ready to try again and again and again...

Real Love

True love
means different things to different people, but nearly everyone believes that they want to find it. And yet when
it's within their grasp it often slips right through their too-eager fingers, because in order to receive real
love, we have to be able to give real love as well.

Unconditional
Love

A foreign
concept for many people, loving people unconditionally means accepting and loving them exactly as they truly are.

Most
people learn about conditional love very early. Who has not experienced 'love' being withdrawn when people are
angry at us and disapprove of our choices?

Some poor
souls have to live perpetually as outcasts to love. Their differences become their
downfall as far as human relationships are concerned, and the bigoted, prejudiced folk around them ensure that
their lives are made miserable as punishment for being different in some way to the herd.

Genuine
love gives people permission to be authentically who they really are
and in fact encourages and supports it, allowing individuals to feel good about themselves and their loved
ones.

It isn't
right to try and change a person at a basic core level.

It's one
thing to ask someone to try and work on healing a destructive habit that impacts everyone around them
negatively. It's an entirely different thing to expect people to ignore their interests and passions, change
their personality and become someone that they are not to fit in with your plans for them.

You
shouldn't really have plans for anybody else, not even as a parent. A parent's sacred task is to watch closely
to learn who their child really is at a deeply authentic
level.

They must
then encourage this person, helping them to grow into their true self.

There is
little that is more selfish than a parent who maps out their child's life into adulthood, believing a child to
be a blank mould for them to shape entirely at their whim. Nothing could be further from the
truth.

If you
have the idea that you can take a man or woman you are attracted to and change them to fit in with your
expectations and lifestyle, then you will not be able to love or be loved properly.

Far better
to wait until the right person enters your life, however long that seems to be taking.

Loving
people is something we are all created to do, it's part of our grand destiny, and it plays a vital role in the
evolution of human beings (and also animals) as a species.

There are
many different kinds of love of which the romantic kind is just one. It is no more nor less important than any
other kind of love. They are all necessary for our mutual growth and well-being.

But for
any kind of love to work, it must be basically unselfish. This means caring about another person and their well-being by putting them first.

Conditional love withdraws when it
cannot get its own way. It has to be paid for in some way, perhaps with our compliance or obedience and
sometimes with real money and gifts.

Lovely
though it is, the Taj Mahal is not conclusive proof of the love held in the heart of Shah Jahan. It is
merely an edifice, a building, a construction project ordered by somebody. It was built with money, of which he
had plenty. It's a bit of a sham.

Do you
give real love? Do you receive real love? Do you have real love in your life?

If you
don't, there is no need to despair.

Make your
body a temple of love. Be a conduit for love. Give people real, genuine,
caring love. The quantum universe has certain working parts and widgets which control and monitor the flow
of energy down to an infinitesimal level.

The law of
cause and effect will make sure that when the love you give changes to a substance of superior quality, so will
the love you receive.

If you
don't believe Dame Wotta Tripp, she challenges you to experiment with unconditional love for yourself and help
to spread a little joy, as well as relief, in today's harsh world.